The Hagalz Line - Iron Web or Brittle Net?

The Western Flank/Anthill

The bulls turned razored war machine rampaging into the trenches of the Warlock Order's western flank are fired upon by some orcs, others are spat backwards upon pikes. Still the frenzied bulls that do make it past the numerically-thinned and demoralized orcish infantry wreck havoc in their shallow, muddy, and filth-infested trenches, before they are put down at close range with bayonet and sword. Cursing the Warlock Order, cursing the foul and malignant Baron, cursing the Godslayers, cursing everything save the God of Slaughter itself, the orcs are worked up into a maddened rage by what is seen by their commanders as taunting by the Dragon King. Howling and enraged, the cruel remnants of the tribal irregulars snatch up their weapons and make a maddened charge for the light units of infantry massing down the anthill. Facing the wholesale advance of the entire orcish division ((which possibly outnumbers the Godslayer troops rushing from the anthill)) the brutal shock troops both maim and bless their hobgoblin and dwarven manipulators. "Operation: Orc Shield" is out of commission as of now. It's ever foul, putrid beast for himself out there. However, there is possibly enough of the orcs to swallow up the troops from the anthill in their tide of chaos. Either way, this is likely the orcs' breaking point, if they do not see victory for their beloved War deity tonight. It's the orcs numbers, base killer instincts, and advantage at night versus the Godslayers' organization and skill.

The Hobgoblins, met with the advance of Archos' dwarves, remain steadfast and brutally defiant for now. Their organization betrays the doctine and brutal society of a powerful enemy in the bulky and tough humanoids. They allow the slower but strong dwarven infantry to advance, and then begin emptying strafe after strafe of machine gun fire into select patterns of their ranks. The automatic sprays are none too prolific, however, due to the next factor - they must avoid hitting their own allies. Straight through the middle of the Hobgoblin trenches and into this new "no man's land" come the Dragon Legionaire dwarves in a complete over the top advance against their once-brethren. This attack is no frenzied dash for the afterlife, however. The true meaning of Dragon Legion "heavy infantry" is seen in this engagement. Wagons stocked full of black powder and lit fuses are propelled directly into enemy ranks with crude, "straight-firing" high velocity rockets - many of the incendiary type which will also explode upon impact, gouting flames in an after-the-fact inferno of death and destruction against the enemy. ((These assaults are quite numerous, and relentless))

When it comes to close range combat with the Dragon Legion, the Godslayers are in for a deadly and brutal fight to the finish. Heavily armored dwarven heavies open up with submachine guns, lite .30 MGs, grenadiers chunking bombs into their opposing brethren's ranks. But perhaps their most fearsome tool is their choice of melee weapons. Dwarven war axes are unfurled for the close-range night fighting, and many in the Legionaire division carry literally chainsaws and heavy steel shields into battle. The Legion shock troops show why they were held in reserve for so long, moving in a butcherous path into their enemies.

Then come the hobgoblin infantry themselves, following the Dragon Legionaire dwarves' example, emerging wholesale from their trenches in a bayonet and sabre charge which pits an already almost assuredly hard-pitted Godslayer dwarven division's ranks with a set of flank attacks that combat the superior skill of their foes with, again, sheer numbers.

Dragon Legion Hobgoblin stormtroopers are the final addition to the frey, moving in with heavy shotguns, lite MGs, and submachine guns. Unlike a rifle, in close-quarters, the submachine gunners are sure to be quite effective in the hand to hand quarters of the enemy. The objective is simple - the Legionaire dwarves is the Baron's fist, the Hobgoblin regulars his twin set of hammers crushing against the anvil simultaneously, and the Legionaire hobgoblin stormtroopers the white hot daggers aimed at the enemy dwarves' hearts.

((Not saying this is a first round K.O. for the Baron, I'm just doing my best to counter each part of the attack. The Hobgoblins have a very good system here. It would have been even better, if not for their idiot orc "friends" dashing in another direction to kill randomely))

The Hagalz Line "proper"
To think, that they died in such a place. So many of them, each and every moment, hitting the mud in pools of gore and filth. The core of the great army manning the Hagalz Line itself were the humans - old men, formerly healthy adults, and teenagers barely old enought to tote their rifles before they were hardened by the rigors of the trench life. The dragons' blitz was unexpected, and easily began to overrun many positions where the line itself was attacked.

The initial shock of seeing the mass suicide disgusted some to the point of not even wishing to look at a rifle for the rest of his life, enraged others, and depressed even more. How did 400 men just walk up there and slash their own throats open. Many vomit at the site of the suicide, others lower or shake their head in disgust. This war terrible... (Obvious results played out below thos)

Seeing their first glimpse of the "dreaded Hagalz line" up close and personal, Godslayer troops will witness the sheer magnitude of the ailing trenches up close. Concrete reinforcements were everywhere - barbed wire was made virtually useless by the use of dragonfolk in the attack. Machine gun bunkers blazed away at the enemy where ever they could, but the troops had already penetrated the lines. This was where the best got to live on and the rest got to become a statistic. Sheer, hand to hand combat. There was, at least at first, no contest. The dragons themselves tore massive, bloodied gaps in the swarming, screaming, and even shrieking Warlock Order infantry that literally poured in like rats into a sewer tunnel. There were so many of them. Was this intimidating to any of the disciplined Godslayer troops? ((You decide!))

The enemy troops fought like zombies - they were dead men walking. Tenacity was nonexistant at first, but as the body count keeps growing, more and more of the infantry units pour in to assist in the battle. Anti-dragon weaponry ((in progress during the rigorous wait and sniping that the two sides did at one another for quite some time)) now came into play. As more dragons landed over the trenches, Order soldiers hoisted up huge pikes to impale the beasts, arrived on all angles with these weapons - driven on almost every side by man and elder and boy alike, all sweating and bleeding together in the horrors of this battle as they attempted to push the dragons back. Of course, gouts of flames inevitably obliterated many of these troops. However, they just kept coming...

On the greater scale ((I had to define the confusion first! hehe...)) the Baron is flooding the areas of assault with waves of troops that he knows he has to spare. Needless to say, this tactic is murderous against his own men, but there are, again, so many of them to sacrifice in this pitched battle.

What few stormtroopers are still at the Hagalz line proper itself are utilized deep within the trenches, in a second by second effort to kill as many Godslayers as possible.

The ballista crews that do remain are pressed into immediate action, here, firing randomely just over the trenches. Some few soldiers fall to friendly fire, obviously, but the end result is that the dragons face a scattered spree of potentially deadly thorns in their side, until the female conscripts and their machines are neutralized. The ballistas do not target areas flooded with Order soldiers. Flares are fired at low-range over the trenches, painting the night air with a nihilistic firebrand of colours as death shows her infinite faces tonight. Eventually, the Warlock Order resorts to firing the flares at the dragons, as well.

Deserters. Many Warlock Order soldiers have simply had enough of the Baron's utter bullshit and they break into a mad dash in any which direction. Incidentily, the tell-tale signs of retreating as opposed to combat are obvious in the flare light, and ballista crews are ordered to brutally mow down the "traitors" along with the dragons. The friendly fire this generates is rather inconsequential - one way or another the Order has lost troops. It's simply a reflection of the officers' malign attitude.

To make matters worse, there are hundreds of rebels making incursions against the line tonight as well. The smart ones chose areas already weakened and brought into bedlam by Archos' soldiers. The less wise choose fresh positions and cause less damage, before they are opened up on by strafing and forced to lay low. For now, however, due to the concentration on the Godslayer army itself by the Hagalz defenders, many rebels actually make it into the trenches, easily becoming imbued within the darkness and haunting shadows that contrast the hellhole arenas of brutal combat elsewhere. Even soldiers attempting to surrender or flee are butchered as brigades of rebels administer there own brand of justice. Officers unlucky enought to be caught by these men are often hewn to pieces by their blades. In more than one instance, the peasantry charges the rear of a Warlock Order company charging through the trenches to engage Godslayer troops, hurling decapitated W.O. heads at their former countrymen. They are promptly mowed down by machine guns, for the most part, but the effects are gruesome. Many soldiers drop their weapons and still attempt to flee, others (especially the children) are reduced to sobbing, gibbering wrecks, huddled together, awaiting slaughter or salvation at the hands of Archos' men. Even these boys, if caught by most renegades are butchered with out mercy.

The powers of hatred are a double edged sword. For many of the Warlock Order troops, it is do or die, in this fight, and they continue to charge into the frey, be it on open turf or the close-knit brutality of the trenches. Seeing their brethren butchered turns some away, and drives others into a maddened rage. Either way, one could suppose, it heightens the chaos and mayhem at a terrible cost.

((Okay, here, there is mass confusion. The Hagalz line has been breached, but there are still plenty of troops to keep the battle raging, for now. However, the Godslayer is obviously winning in this arena. Therefor, the Order's tactics are to smother the enemy with their own suicidal advances of attrition. Thats why I described the number of angles and the maddened charges of troops bolting towards the attackers at every angle at once during the melees. I figured thats what it would be like.))

A new opponent strikes, abruptly, into the Godslayers' hide. Now the ruthlessness of the Baron has reached a new meter on the scale of devilish cruelty. Underneath the Hagalz line, the Dragon Legion's underearth engineers and sappers begin one of their final resorts. Dwarven sappers are ordered to collapse the ground beneath many of the concentrations of combat. The Baron sends squads of infantry on all angles of the targetted Godslayer units, knowing that his men will begin to get beaten baddly anyways by Archos' troops, but that the chaos and tenacity of this emotional and horrific pitched battle coupled with the simultaneous assaults will keep the enemy boxed in, long enough for the ground to be destroyed underneath the feet of friend and foe alike. Those who survive the actual fall are met with hosts of new enemies. The Spider Army was making its first major move in this campaign. It was not even a large one.

Drow soldiers, never having trouble in the darkness, armed with high-powered, repeating .30-06 rifles, poisoned bayonets, and venomous crossbow darts pounce upon victims in the collapsed earth from other tunnels, backed by a few squads of massive bugbears warriors and wiry goblin knife and axemen sent in first to mop up. This methodical annihilation continues. Of course, out of necessity, as many surviving friendly troops who fell with their enemies are saved or... spared, rather... but their number, not surprisingly, is few.

For, in other situations, where drow do not feel like showing themselves, the expendable bugbears are given flame throwers and large gas cannisters - torching fallen and often maimed victims wholesale, or else busting mustard gas all over them. The attackers, obviously, in this case, are wearing gas masks.

The Drow are yet concerned about the dragons who could not be targetted in the fearsome Legion's sabotage of the earth, and thus choose to hit and run very quickly, leaving their thralls to finish mopping up and perhaps live, perhaps die.

The shadow elves for one, are not about to become the Baron's cannon fodder, even if they are his allies.

((Allright, I thought it was now or never to use the combined force of the Dragon Legion sappers whom everyone knew had been doing a lot of digging, and the Spider Army, which are not so well known, although Rob has the basic info on them -s- As far as the accuracy of the collapsing goes, the dwarves are using a blend of their natural underground senses and machinary used to guage pressure, noise, depth of the earth, ect. So their tunnel collapses are, like most Dragon Legion assaults, very organized, very synchronized, and very thorough...))

The Eastern Flank/The Canal
And, finally, what was left of the Warlock Order's defenses and troop concentrations to be attacked. The lite companies which make the faux attack upon the bank are successful in their diversion - making much of the bloody mayhem wrecked in the trenches, before the Dragon Legion and the Spider Army countered with sabotage, possible. The thinned ballista defenses and the slow and choppy arrival of reinforcements from the canal to the trenches are a direct result of them.

The lite companies themselves, however, are fired upon as soon as they attempt to cross the canal. Heavy iron cannons spray black-powder propelled cannon balls at the enemy, afterwards, on the beaches, MGs and riflemen from behind sandbags fire on survivors ruthlessly. Of course, since it is a true faux attack, the Godslayer companies here are not truly expected to win ground ((right?))

All the while, field officers frantically rush their troops back towards the line, as distress flares and the sounds and sights of combat can be heard and seen for miles around.